A Liberal government would immediately work to scrap the Mexican visa requirement and push for a major North American clean energy and environment agreement, Justin Trudeau said in Ottawa Monday.

“Mexico is now an equal or greater strategic preoccupation in Washington than Canada. This basic fact cannot be wished away,” Trudeau told a lunchtime audience at the Chateau Laurier hotel.

For a speech that was billed as a way to repair a Canada-U.S. relationship the Harper government has damaged by, among other things said Trudeau — trying to bully the Obama administration into approving the Keystone XL pipeline — Mexico was as big a focus